Left and right parenthesis: ( and ). There are many different conventions about where to put parentheses; for example, one might write x or (x). Sometimes one uses colons or full stops instead of parentheses to make formulas unambiguous. One interesting but rather unusual convention is "Polish notation", where one omits all parentheses, and writes , , and so on in front of their arguments rather than between them. Polish notation is compact and elegant, but rare because it is hard for humans to read it.

First-order logic as described here is often called first-order logic with identity, because of the presence of an identity symbol = with special semantics. In first-order logic without identity this symbol is omitted.

There are numerous minor variations that may define additional logical symbols:

Sometimes the truth constants T for "true" and F for "false" are included. Without any such logical operators of valence 0 it is not possible to express these two constants otherwise without using quantifiers.

Sometimes the Sheffer stroke (P | Q, aka NAND) is included as a logical symbol.

The exclusive-or operator "xor" is another logical connective that can occur as a logical symbol.

Sometimes it is useful to say that "P(x) holds for exactly one x", which can be expressed as xP(x). This notation, called uniqueness quantification, may be taken to abbreviate a formula such as x (P(x) y (P(y) (x = y))).

Not all logical symbols as defined above need occur. For example:

Since (x)φ can be expressed as (( x)( φ)), and (x)φ can be expressed as (( x)( φ)), one of the two quantifiers and can be dropped.

Since φψ can be expressed as (( φ) ( ψ)), and φψ can be expressed as (( φ) ( ψ)), either or can be dropped. In other words, it is sufficient to have or as the only logical connectives among the logical symbols.

Similarly, it is sufficient to have or just the Sheffer stroke as the only logical connectives.

There are also some frequently used variants of notation:

Some books and papers use the notation φ ψ for φ ψ. This is especially common in proof theory where is easily confused with the sequent arrow.

~φ is sometimes used for φ, φ & ψ for φ ψ.

There is a wealth of alternative notations for quantifiers; e.g., x φ may be written as (x)φ. This latter notation is common in texts on recursion theory."